


Shiftships

by louciferish



Series: Ordinary People [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Blood and Injury, Comic Book Violence, Excessive Drinking, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-02-28 12:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 18,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13271751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish
Summary: Yuuri was just a kid when he decided what he wanted to be when he grew up: a superhero, just like his idol, Aura.The only problem with that plan? Yuuri doesn't have any powers.Now he's thousands of miles from home, somehow on the same team as the man he's admired since childhood, fighting crime and getting his butt kicked. Somewhere, somebody made a mistake.A Yuri on Ice superhero AU





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title blatantly stolen from an issue of "The Authority" comic series.
> 
> This series is a combination of works in DC Comics fandom which are YOI AU fics, and works in YOI fandom which are superhero comics AUs. Yes, that is very confusing to explain. No, you don't have to read the works in the other fandom to get these.
> 
> EDIT: As of 3/4/18, significant edits have been completed to both chapters for both clarity and content.

His entrance is more of a tumble than anything else, but Yuuri makes it through the window and even gets it mostly closed behind him before his knees buckle, and he slides down the wall to land in an undignified heap by the bed. All he can feel in the moment is gratitude that he made it through the window safely this time, better than the close call he had last month when an elderly woman out feeding the stray cats literally stumbled across him in the alleyway. Thankfully, her screams woke him up in time for him to hide inside a dumpster before the rest of the building came running to see what the fuss was about. It was not the most glamorous night of his life, but also not the worst.

He lets himself just rest where he fell for a couple of minutes, waiting for the ebb and flow of dizziness to break long enough to consider moving again. When his head starts to clear, he quickly lurches back onto his feet, only to have to grab at the window sill for support as the dark static encroaches on the edges of his vision again. He closes his eyes and does a quick mental inventory. There’s that cut on his left bicep, plus there’s blood running along the side of his face from somewhere unknown, and his knees definitely aren’t in great shape either. 

The blackouts are probably just fatigue, but could be the result of the mysterious head wound as well. Given that, he probably shouldn’t linger by the window too long. He lets himself slowly slide back to the floor, discards his coat onto the bed, and then starts to scoot himself toward the kitchen on his butt. The glamorous life of a vigilante behind the scenes, indeed. He’s glad his apartment is so small by American standards, because it means he doesn’t have far to travel to reach supplies. Still, he makes a mental note to put another first aid kit closer to the window, maybe under the bed.

Once he’s made it into the kitchen, he claws his way up the cabinets to lean on the counter. He pauses there to take a deep breath, then levers himself up, twisting to plant himself on the countertop beside the sink. The cut on his arm screams at the abuse, and he feels the darkness rush back at him from all direction, but he forces himself forward, putting his head into his hands. He focuses on his breathing, counting to three with each inhale. Slowly, the static clears from his vision, and he grabs the first aid kit from the top drawer between his dangling legs. 

A cursory inspection of his sleeve indicates this is yet another black t-shirt donated to the cause of justice, so he uses the kitchen scissors to go ahead and just cut the shirt from collar to hem, saving himself the pain of having to pull it off over his head. His phone vibrates against his thigh, and he fishes it out from the cargo pocket, squinting at the screen.

 **Yuuko:** This is your check in. Alive?

 **Yuuri:** yeah, home.

 **Yuuko:** Need help?

Yuuri swipes at the wetness on his face and feels dizzy again when he sees the bright red blood smeared across his fingertips. It’s not the first time its occurred to him that someone who gets queasy around blood should be in a different line of work.

 **Yuuri:** yes if you can

Almost immediately he hears the footsteps in the hallway, followed by the familiar sound of Yuuko’s key in the lock. His heart still pounds as the door starts to open, and he clutches the edge of the counter reflexively, then exhales slowly and drops his shoulders the moment he sees Yuuko’s concerned face peering around the edge of the doorway. The brief hit of adrenaline just leaves him feeling even more drained in his wake.

“Oh, Yuuri,” she says gently, closing the door behind her and hurrying across the room. She’s in her pink striped pajamas, strands of hair flying loose around her face like she just crawled out of bed, and he’s immediately hit with guilt for keeping her up on a night off. “What on earth happened this time?”

Yuuri shrugs, making the cut on his arm protest again at his careless treatment. “The usual, I guess. I was too slow and too sloppy.” Yuuko hands him a bottle of water and some type of pill, waits for him to swallow, then sets to work wetting a towel and washing the blood off his arm. “Someone had a knife.”

“Hmm. The cut looks clean, but you’ll need stitches,” she scolds, wringing red-tinged water from the towel before dabbing at his hairline. “What about this one?”

“I’m not even sure,” he admits, staring past her at the postcards on his fridge, focusing on a photo of the Hasetsu coastline to distract himself. “I don’t remember getting cut anywhere else.” The towel finds a tender spot, and he flinches, then looks to see if she noticed.

Yuuko is frowning, a mixture of concentration and, he knows, disappointment. “I think you were hit, not cut. There’s not much of a wound here, just a lot of blood.” Now that she says it, he remembers the second mugger coming up behind him while he was busy getting the first guy away from the victim. The had been another knife. Something had connected with his face, but it wasn’t the blade - maybe he’d been struck with the handle instead? The goons certainly hadn’t been highly trained fighters, so it’s always possible.

If the mugger had been holding the knife correctly, he could have dragged it down Yuuri’s face. He might have lost an eye at the right angle. He bites his lip.

Yuuko works away in comfortable silence, cleaning the small wound at his hairline. She doesn’t need him to remind her that what he does is dangerous, or that some night he might come back with a problem she can’t fix. He turns his head away and closes his eyes as she stitches up the long gash in his arm. 

“There,” she says when she finishes pinning the last of the gauze around his bicep. “Is that everything, or are you hiding more from me?”

“Just some skinned knees,” he says, trying to force a reassuring smile. “I can handle those.” 

“Good,” she pats him on the thigh, then tilts her head at him. The buttons on her pajama top are askew. “Are you okay? You seem a little…”

Yuuri nods, “I’m just tired, sorry. It was a rough night.”

“Do you need me to stay? I can take the couch. Takeshi can handle the girls solo if he needs to.”

He waves his hands, shaking his head, then drops an arm onto the counter faux-casually to support himself when the world starts to spin again in response to the movement. “I’ll be fine, Yuuko-chan, thank you. You go back to your babies.”

Yuuko smiles softly and ruffles his hair. “Okay, okay. I guess I really am acting like a mom now, huh? You get some sleep, and text me if you need anything else.” Yuuri crosses his heart solemnly, and watches her back as she heads back over to the neighboring apartment. 

He slides to the floor once the door closes and is impressed when his legs decide to hold his weight long enough to make it to the couch. He sits before skimming out of his pants, just in case he gets dizzy again. His knees are skinned up, for sure, but he’s had worse. He picks a couple little bits of gravel out of the wounds, but they’ll be fine until he can stand long enough to shower, so he chucks the ripped jeans across the room, where they land on top of his discarded trench coat, then stretches out on the couch and turns on the TV.

The news anchors are clamoring about the Justice Friends having thwarted a massive alien threat yet again. In the shaky camera footage, this batch of aliens look a bit like a mad scientist cross-bred a zebra with a duck, then dropped the resulting offspring from a very tall building, so he can’t imagine that it was a stealth attack. Aura takes over the entire screen then, all gleaming silver hair and blue eyes, contrasted by that unmistakable magenta and gold costume. He’s saying something inspiring about the amazing power of teamwork, but Yuuri’s brain can’t resist the pain meds Yuuko gave him any longer. His eyelids start to droop, then his head, and finally he surrenders himself to much-needed sleep.

-

When his alarm goes off the next morning, the TV is still on, now full of perky morning show hosts making bad jokes about some competitive dancing show he’s never seen, because he’s never home during primetime. He pushes off from the couch and finds that, despite a persistent soreness in his thighs and some painful protests from the arm in particular, his legs are now holding him up and his head feels steady. He double checks his texts, and sees nothing but a reminder from his manager that he has a shift this afternoon.

He makes it to the bathroom at a hobble, wraps the bandage on his arm with the plastic wrap he keeps on top of the medicine cabinet, and gets in the shower. The wounds to his head and knees feel like they’ve been dipped in acid the moment the water hits them, and he hisses through the pain. Once it subsides, he gingerly cleans both injured areas before soaping up and washing the back alley filth from the rest of his body. 

He towels off as gently as he washed, not wanting to start anything bleeding again at the moment, and wipes the condensation off the mirror with a dry corner of the towel. The scars and bruises glare back at him, stark white lines and dark splotches of chiaroscuro across his chest. He knows the arm will probably be another one, despite Yuuko’s best efforts. He pulls the spare first aid kit from the medicine cabinet and notes he’s running low on gauze again, then carefully applies the antibacterial ointment to his hairline and puts a couple of the big square band-aids on both knees. He _never_ seems to have enough of those big square ones.

Once he’s certain he won’t bleed on his clothes, he puts on his workout gear, grabs his keys, and knocks on Yuuko’s door. After a moment, Takeshi’s red face squints out at him from above the door chain, dark circles haloing both eyes and hair sticking up every direction. His gaze darts down the hallway quickly before coming back to Yuuri. “What now? Yuuko’s asleep.”

“I’m going to the gym,” Yuuri says, jingling his keys absently. “I was going to stop by the grocery store on the way home; do you need me to pick anything up?” 

“Bananas,” Takeshi says, tension dropping from his expression. “The girls are meant to start eating more solid food and all they’ll touch this week is bananas - _brown_ ones. As brown as you can get them. I’m gagging every time I have to peel one; it’s so gross.” Yuuri nods in understanding, then turns to go. “Also milk!” Takeshi calls after him down the hallway. Of course they need milk. They always need milk. It’s the least Yuuri can do to repay Yuuko for stitching him up so often. 

He heads straight to the gym for his usual workout, mindful to stop anything that causes even the slightest twinge of protest from the cut on his arm, then finishes up by running the two kilometers from the gym to the grocery store, where he stocks up on food for himself, gauze, square band-aids, a third first aid kit to slide under the bed, and finally the much-needed brown bananas and milk for Takeshi and Yuuko’s triplets. 

Back at the apartment building, he knocks at the Nishigoris’ door. Takeshi’s forehead just about touches the floor in gratitude when he hands over the bag of bananas and milk. The sounds of squealing, kids’ music, and high-pitched cartoon voices emanating through the walls of his studio help him to shake off a sharp pang of homesickness. At least he doesn’t have to live with other people’s noise anymore. Most of the time he prefers it that way. He puts the TV on mute and pops in his earbuds to jam out to some soothing white noise.

With the sounds of rain injecting calm into his bloodstream directly through his ears, he throws together a protein shake, because now that he’s home he’s suddenly _starving_ , and grabs his jeans and coat from where he left them on the bed in the wee hours of this morning. He stuffs both into the kitchen sink and fills it with water and detergent, hoping some of the blood will soak out before he scrubs them. One of the many downsides to being a crimefighter with a secret identity and no million-dollar inheritance is that you can’t exactly take your vigilante outfits down to the local laundromat where anyone might spot your distinctive clothing - or at least notice the blood stains - and put everything together. The next time Yuuri moves, he’s definitely only looking at places with laundry in the unit.

That's what he said last time he moved, though. Places with laundry included are expensive. His phone vibrates in his jacket pocket, and he quickly towels his arms off to answer it.

 **Phichit:** Are you watching me on TV???

 **Yuuri:** No. Right now?

 **Phichit:** Yes!! Right now!

Sure enough, he can see Phichit’s face in close up on the local news, grinning widely and talking about something. Yuuri turns the volume back up, but only catches, “- and then the ship blew up!” before the program cuts away to footage of the battle with the mushed zebra-ducks from the day before. Whoever caught this on their phone got Phichit in the background of the shot, standing on a park bench in his red and gold costume and distracting one of the creatures with his pyrotechnics show while Twister runs circles around it, showering the lumpy little alien with hits.

The foreground of the shot is Aura, of course, hovering several feet above the ground, beams of pure light shooting from both hands and cutting swaths through a small horde of aliens like it’s nothing. Yuuri tries to picture himself there, but the version of Night Owl he inserts into the fight just stands in the background, repeatedly kicking one of the ugly little creatures until a clump of them swarms him, pushing him to the ground, and he’s smothered under some squishy, stripey little lumps. No statues are built to honor his sacrifice. 

The phone buzzes again in his hand.

 **Phichit:** Did you see?

 **Yuuri:** Just in time! You did great. There were a lot of those things, huh?

 **Phichit:** So many! 

**Phichit:** Aura’s having a party at his for us to celebrate tonight. You should come!

 **Yuuri:** I wasn’t even there for the fight. It will be weird.

 **Phichit:** You’re on the team too, Yuuri!

 **Phichit:** The party starts early. you can leave plenty early to patrol!

 **Phichit:** Please, Yuuri, I’ll be so happy if you come.

Yuuri sighs, rubbing his eyes. He really has no desire to be the odd man out at a party full of superheroes. He may or may not have had nightmares in which he shows up to a party at Aura’s headquarters, only to realize he’s completely naked. Phichit knows him too well though, and knows exactly how much trouble Yuuri has with telling him no.

 **Yuuri:** Okay, fine. Pick me up at work?

 **Phichit:** You know it!

 **Yuuri:** You owe me

Yuuri groans as his stomach begins to churn already. Now he just has to survive another six hours of awkward anticipation without the sweet relief of cancelling. He wastes some time scrubbing the blood out of his clothes, lost in the monotony of cleaning, then hangs them to dry in the bathroom and showers again to wash off the sweat from the gym.

Once he’s safely disguised in his work uniform of awful khakis, sneakers, and a green polo shirt, he grabs his backpack to pack clothes for the Justice Friends party. His pants and coat are still wet and need repairs, so he has to dig through his wardrobe for backup options. He can clearly envision himself trying to walk into the party, only to get turned away at the door because he can’t convince anyone other than Phichit that he belongs there.

Unfortunately, he’s apparently decimated most of his “night job clothes” recently and can’t find much other than what he just washed. He settles for a pair of black skinny jeans he hasn’t worn in a couple years in place of his cargos, and with his last black t-shirt having been shredded the night before, he grabs a button-down off the hanger instead. On closer inspection it might be navy blue instead of black. He hold it up near the light, but still can’t be sure. Close enough. 

He’s about to look like a real nerd by turning up in a cardigan too when he spots a black leather jacket in a crumpled heap on the top shelf of the closet. It was his ex’s. He only held onto it in case, someday, he got asked to return it, but it’s been two years and he hasn’t heard from Lee since. He hesitantly presses his nose to the collar of the jacket, but after so long in his closet it no longer holds any discernible trace of Lee’s scent. It might as well be his now. He stuffs it into the backpack with a spare domino mask, then grabs the bag and heads out to catch the bus.

When Yuuri was a little kid, he wanted to be a ballet dancer or a professional skater or maybe a puppy. Then Aura happened, and everything changed except for one thing: Yuuri was never good at having dreams he could actually hope to achieve. But he comforts himself that he didn’t land too far from his childhood goals. He’ll never be equal to Aura, but despite his failures, he’s going to be _in Aura’s headquarters_ tonight. He’ll be there as a nobody, but he’s still living the dream to some extent, being in his idol’s home, maybe even in the same room. It's not how he pictured their meeting as a kid, but it’s a step. 

And he works as a skater, as well, or at least, he works where there are skaters. And skates! Disgusting, well-used, foul-smelling rental skates. 

The smell of stale sweat, wet cookies, and popcorn hits him the moment he steps through the automatic door into the roller rink, second in power only to the sound of screaming children and outdated music. He stuffs his backpack under the counter and nods to the guy working - Mike? Mark? - Yuuri has no idea, because as soon as Yuuri has his nametag on, the other guy grabs his stuff and clocks out without so much as a nod of acknowledgement. 

Yuuri clocks in, and turns to find a couple kids already waiting at the counter for him. “Skate rental?” The kid in front nods. “What sizes?” There are no birthday party reservations on the schedule for the day. He settles in for a comfortably monotonous shift. 

-

He clocks out at six, tagging in a blonde girl who looks like she’s barely out of high school. He’s never seen her before, but there’s a lot of turnover at the rink - kids come and go every season. It used to make him feel like a failure, still working a job normally occupied by teenagers, and he’s certain the other employees see him that way, but the fact is that it’s impossible to hold down a “real” job with the schedule his other work demands.

He grabs his bag and ducks into the men’s room to get changed. His phone buzzes in his back pocket, and he doesn’t even need to check it to know that it’s Phichit, saying he’s on his way. 

Yuuri folds up his regular work clothes on the back of the toilet and slides into the skinny jeans he brought. It’s been a long time since the concert these were purchased for, and it takes a couple hops and shimmies to get them comfortably in place. They’re a bit more snug in the thigh than he’d prefer, but it’s this or go to a superhero party in _khakis_. He pull on the shirt and finds that somehow it’s maybe a bit too big on him now, not exactly a tailored look. He leaves it untucked, and folds his glasses into the pocket of the leather jacket before putting in his contacts. His phone buzzes again, so he stuffs his uniform into the bag, sticks the domino mask in the pocket with his glasses, and tries to hurry out to Phichit’s car before any of his coworkers can see him.

He scans the parking lot, hesitating just outside the double doors. Phichit’s text said he was here, but Yuuri doesn’t see his car. His eyes sweep the parking lot again, and he finally sees a brown arm, frantically waving from the bright red sports car parked directly in front of the rink. “Yuuri,” his friend calls, beeping the horn. “Come on!”

He jogs over, dropping his bag in the floorboard before sliding into the passenger’s seat. “Phichit, where did this car come from?” He cranes his neck, looking into the back seat for clues. “Did you get rid of the Camry?”

Phichit grins, and beeps the horn again, showing off. “Yeah, I forgot to tell you. I just got it a few days ago. Like it?”

Yuuri looks around at the clean, tan leather seats and the red shiny hood, then up at the moon roof over his head. He takes a deep breath through his nose to get a whiff of that new car smell. “Wow,” he says reverently. There’s a rock in his stomach that rises to his throat, the mixed excitement for seeing a friend do well and dread at seeing them surpass you. “It’s great, Phichit.” He wants to ask how much it cost, how Phichit could afford this, but he doesn’t.

Phichit is his best friend, so he hears the question anyway. “It’s actually a couple years old, but you can’t tell, huh? My agent finally got a licensing deal. I guess they’ll be putting little light-up Sparkler action figures on the shelves any day now.” He laughs a bit self-consciously, pulling out onto the street, and Yuuri notices he’s gone a similar route in dressing, sticking to the red and gold colors of his costume but carried over into street clothes, noticeable but not obvious.

“You deserve it,” Yuuri says firmly, forcing a small smile. “Soon every kid in Thailand will be wearing Sparkler t-shirts to school.” Phichit blushes, but doesn’t argue, focusing on the road.

Aura’s house is no secret fortress in the Antarctic or camouflaged lodge out in the woods. Everyone in the world knows where it is, the gleaming white stone and red brick structure just outside the city, built on a hill overlooking everything like a father looking down at the face of his sleeping infant. 

They park Phichit’s car on a random street in the suburban neighborhood that surrounds the house, mask up, and walk the rest of the way up the hill to get to the party. The houses on the way up are nearly as large as the headquarters building itself. The wealthy are all too happy to pay massive property taxes to be within screaming distance of the world’s most powerful superhero.

There’s a tall iron fence surrounding the building, a gate with a guardhouse, and no doubt half a dozen top of the line electronic security measures. On the street across from the gate, Yuuri recognizes the familiar logo of the local news station on a white van, but there are also a few big black cars with tinted windows and a suspiciously generic look about them. The fence and the gatehouse likely do more to keep out the press than to deter the bad guys.

At the gatehouse, Phichit goes through some sort of elaborate ritual with the uniformed guard involving his phone, an electronic scanning device, and possibly a blood sample, but eventually the guard presses the button to unlock the gate for them. Phichit, walking backwards through the gate, makes a few sparks fly from his fingers for the news van as they enter, just in case the cameras are rolling.

As soon as the gate closes behind them, Phichit grabs his hand and hauls him up the winding driveway at a jog. “Quick, let’s get a selfie with the house in the background!” Yuuri groans, but submits, flashing a peace sign for the camera with Aura’s house visible up the drive behind them. Then, they have to jump out of the way as a dark purple sports car roars up the road toward them.

The purple car squeals to a halt right in front of the steps to the house, and JJ climbs out of the driver’s seat in a lavender sequined blazer, khakis, and dark sunglasses. Yuuri hides a laugh behind his hand. “Of course Aura even invites that guy.”

“No one ever invites ‘Jeneral Justice’,” Phichit replies, complete with ironic air quotes. “Somehow, he always finds out and turns up anyway.”

Yuuri shakes his head, but at least he won’t be the only unwanted spare hanging around the party tonight. JJ’s presence actually makes him feel a little better, a feeling that lasts right up until the moment Phichit pulls open the heavy wooden door and Yuuri catches his first glimpse of the inside of Aura’s house.

It’s overwhelming… boring.

Outside, the white and red exterior and the looming golden gates all give the impression of incredible grandeur and presence. Inside, the place looks like a model home in any gated community. The walls are white, and the floors are a highly polished hardwood. It all looks very classy and expensive, but there are no rugs, no photographs, and very little furniture. The couple of tables Yuuri sees in the entryway are modern and sterile, and the centerpiece of blue roses and baby’s breath decorating the foyer is nothing but silk flowers, which someone forgot to dust. 

Yuuri had often imagined what it might be like to meet Aura, to be his friend for real. Most of those fantasies hadn’t involved moving in together or picking out furniture, but this is certainly not what he would have pictured if asked to describe Aura’s taste. He cranes his neck to see up the stairs to the second floor landing, but it looks completely barren as well. He’s tempted to wander up and snoop. He looks around to ask Phichit, who is always ready to enable some bad decisions, but finds that his friend has vanished. Rather than follow his baser instincts up the stairs, he trails the sounds of music and chatter into the next room.

This area is clearly where the party is happening. It’s an impressively large open entertaining area, probably more than twice the size of Yuuri’s entire studio, but, like the entryway, it doesn’t feel like a space anyone actually lives in. The kitchen is open to the room, all steel fixtures, dark cabinets, and quartz counters, and the furniture in the living room is beautiful and elegant. Nevertheless, Yuuri can’t shake the feeling that it’s artificial, staged, like he’s just wandered into a very upscale IKEA showroom. 

He also questions the wisdom of having all these people over and drinking near white sofas. His eyes widen as someone holding a glass of red wine attempts to flop down on the couch. The couch doesn’t seem to give to their weight at all, and the wine sloshes in the glass. Yuuri looks away quickly before his hospitality instincts kick in.

He glances around the room and quickly discerns three things: Aura isn’t in here, Yuuri is the only person in the room wearing a mask, and Phichit is already over by the wet bar. He’s glad he came with such a smart friend, and even happier when Phichit welcomes him to the party with a glass of white wine. 

“You’re a good friend,” he says, just in case Phichit didn’t know already. 

Phichit nods back, raising his own glass. “Welcome to the good life. I tried to tell you these parties are pretty relaxed. Everyone really just hangs out, has a couple drinks, and then eventually we’ll do some official business before we leave. You don’t have to talk to anyone but me if you don’t want to.”

“My kind of party,” Yuuri mutters. It is pretty quiet in the room, the few team members around all clustered in small groups to talk. “I feel a little out of place, though,” he admits gesturing to the rest of the room. Then he realizes even Phichit’s taken his domino off. “I’m the only one wearing a mask?”

“Oh, yeah probably,” Phichit says. “After a while, it was just like, what’s the point? We’re all friends here. It sort of fell by the wayside the first time we had a serious injury on the team and needed to notify emergency contacts.” 

Yuuri can certainly understand that feeling; it’s not the first time he’s considered what might need to be done if something happened to him on a patrol. That’s part of how Phichit fits into his life these days, after all: a bridge between what he does in the daylight and his life after dark. If anything ever happened, if his family needed to be told, he knows Phichit would pull through for him.

It’s a bit of a shock to realize that other people have a whole team willing to fill that role, though. The idea of taking off his mask here, letting everyone in the room know who he really is, is a thought his stomach can’t tolerate at all. Of course, none of them would recognize him anyway. He doubts any of the real superheroes spend a lot of time renting skates at a roller rink in the bad part of town. He stares into his glass of wine and wonders if maybe he should trade it in for Sprite.

There’s a loud clatter of footsteps on the stairs in the next room, and then Aura himself finally appears in the doorway. The man is unmistakable, between his preternaturally silver hair and the fact that he literally glows. Even with those sure signs that he’s something special, he looks more human than usual in tailored grey slacks and a pale pink button-down. Yuuri feels his mouth go dry, and he drains his wine glass in one gulp.

Sure, Yuuri’s a member of Aura’s Justice Friends team too, but in the same way some people are members of a church - you go every so often, you nod to a few people you know, but you stay by the door and sneak out as soon as the service is over. Despite the size of the room, this is pretty much as close to his hero as Yuuri’s ever gotten, and all he can focus on is the way his hair falls, silver and soft over one eye, making him look so frail and gentle even though Yuuri knows, could never forget that he’s-

_Yuuri is kneeling on the floor after school, eating a snack and watching cartoons, when the news interrupts his programs. There’s been an accident in the US, a train derailment. The footage is shaky, shot with someone’s hand-held camera. They’re panning across a railroad bridge where a train hangs, the engine and a few passenger cars dangling over a rushing river. The camera stops at the end of the train. The only thing holding it onto the bridge appears to be a bright light, so intense you can barely look at it long enough to make out the small shadow of a figure at the center, like a firefly. It holds the train anchored above the river as people climb out the back, scrambling madly to flee from the back door of the final car._

_Suddenly, the firefly drops, faltering in the air. There’s a sound of metal against metal. The camera falls._

Yuuri realizes with a jolt that he’s been staring. Aura’s blue eyes are focused in on him, curious and confused. He turns his back, flushing, and pours a new drink. When he glances back over his shoulder, the other man has wandered off into a corner, talking with Twister. Yuuri nods to Phichit and they find their own space against a nearby wall.

There are less than a dozen people at the party so far, all presumably members of the team, but if Yuuri knows them then he doesn’t recognize most of them out of costume. Twister is easy enough to spot with that distinctive curly blond hair, apparently introducing Aura to some tiny kid with a two-toned dye job who looks way too young to be in here considering the amount of alcohol floating around. Team Incredible is an easy guess as well, since they’re the opposite of quiet about being siblings even during a fight and share the same unmistakable violet eyes. Yuuri considers waving to them briefly, but they seem preoccupied with each other.

And then there’s JJ, playing it subtle as usual, trying to talk up an athletic red-haired woman he doesn’t know who looks ready to rip his heart out and stomp on it at any moment. As he watches, JJ showily extends his arm all the way across the room to grab himself a chip from the bowl on the kitchen counter. He seems oblivious to the fact that most people are vaguely nauseated by his weird elastic body, rather than impressed.

JJ is the only hero in the room aside from Aura that Yuuri knows is out about his identity in public. The difference between the two of them couldn’t be more profound to Yuuri, though. JJ outed himself because he’s a showboat and wants the credit for his achievements. Aura never had a choice in whether to go public or not.

That footage of the accident had been broadcast all over the world. Everyone knew about the firefly kid, Victor Nikiforov, son of Russian dignitaries who were tragically killed in the derailment. Even if someone missed the video on the news live or the replays the next day, it nearly impossible to miss the ensuing custody battles as the US and Russia each placed warring claims on the life of the first public superhero, who just so happened to also be a twelve year-old boy with few living relatives. Aura hadn’t had the opportunity to hide from the world.

Yuuri hears a strangled gasp from Phichit and looks over to find him staring intently at his phone, looking pale and alarmed as he types, thumbs flying over the screen. “Is everything okay?”

“My roommate just texted me,” Phichit says, biting his lip but not looking up from his phone screen for a second. “Ngein got out of the cage somehow, and he can’t find her.” He finally looks up from the phone and Yuuri can see that his deep brown eyes are wide and filled with fear. It’s the most distressed Yuuri has seen him, and they’ve fought a swarm of mutated giant wasps together. “I’m so sorry, Yuuri, but I have to go. What if the dog finds Ngein before we do? What if she squeezes under the door and gets outside? She’s too small for the world!”

Yuuri puts his arm around Phichit’s shoulders, stroking his arm in an awkward attempt to soothe him. “Hey, it’s okay. Of course, you should go to her right away. You know best where she might be.”

Phichit slumps with relief, resting his head against Yuuri’s shoulder for a moment. “Thank you for understanding,” he says, a slight hitch to his voice. “I’m sorry. I know we just got here. If you want to leave with me it might be awhile before I can take you home, though. I know you wanted to patrol tonight still.”

Yuuri starts to say he’ll leave, but he’s interrupted by the sound of Aura, calling his name. He whips his head around, only to see the petite blond teen he knows as Lynx waving briefly in Aura’s direction from a corner. Of course, no one was talking to him.

Phichit is starting to wiggle impatiently in his grip when he looks back down, and to Yuuri’s alarm there’s a faint glow coming from his hands. “Don’t worry about me,” he says quickly. “I’d just get in the way if I came along. You go home and find that hamster.” He’s pretty sure Phichit’s roommate hates him anyway.

Phichit immediately squirms out from under Yuuri’s arm and grabs his keys from the table, but then he hesitates. “Are you sure? I don’t want to leave you with no way to get home.”

“I’ll take the bus or something. I’m an adult. I promise I find my own way home all the time.” He pats his friend on the shoulder. “Don’t waste time worrying about me, just focus on Ngein. And text me to let me know when you find her, okay?”

“I will,” Phichit says, then quickly embraces Yuuri. “Thank you again. Have a good night!” He makes for the door like he’s being chased, and Yuuri just hopes he remembers to mask up again before the news crews spot him.

He tries to take a sip of his drink to clear his head, but the glass is empty, so he mixes himself another and finds an empty chair in easy reach of the bar.

-

It’s not the worst party that Yuuri’s ever been to, mostly because he’s been left to sit in his chair and drink in peace. A couple of the other guests have recognized him well enough to wave or shout hello, but that’s about it. Phichit texted not long after he got home that he found the missing hamster hiding in a closet behind a pile of laundry, and Yuuri toasts the air to his success, then texts Phichit a picture of the raised glass. His drink empties again, and he’s starting to think of finding his way home when he hears someone suddenly say, “You! Night Owl!” 

He looks up from his glass to see Lynx facing him down. There’s another guy standing behind him with black hair and dark eyes that Yuuri doesn’t recognize. If he passed them on the street, he might assume that the boy in the leather jacket he was the slender blond’s bodyguard, but Yuuri knows first hand how incredibly vicious Lynx can be in a fight. The only person in the room with less need of a bodyguard is Aura himself.

The Justice Friends technically have a junior squad for teen members who’ve just manifested their abilities. Yuuri knows this, but he can’t remember the name of it off the top of his head, and has never really known any of the kids involved. He thinks the little blond with the red streak in his hair who’s been following Twister around all night might be one of them, but he’s not positive it’s not just some Make A Wish kid. 

Lynx had been on the junior team for about a month, but his skillset had made him far too lethal for the kind of fights the trainees occasionally got assigned, and at only fifteen Lynx had been graduated to full Justice Friends membership already. Yuuri’s seen him basically gouge a kaiju’s eyes out with his claws and then do a backflip off its snout. Aura had caught him before he hit the ground, but it was close. Teenagers are terrifying, and Lynx especially so.

But Yuuri’s never actually spoken to the kid before, so he’s not sure why they’re suddenly talking now. He shakes his head to clear it. His thoughts are getting fuzzy around the edges from the drinks. “Yes?”

“You need to vote Otabek in as a member later,” Lynx says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Then you won’t be totally useless for once.”

Yuuri winces, but looks over at the new guy. He barely looks older than Lynx, but projects a sense of calm certainty that Yuuri notes with a little envy. “You’re Otabek? Is that your code name?”

The boy flushes and his eyes suddenly flash from brown to yellow and back again. He licks his teeth, flashing fangs. “They told me Wolfman was taken,” he mumbles, barely audible over the music and other conversations in the room. Yuuri wonders absently if the fangs make it hard to enunciate. 

“We’re calling him Man-Wolf for now,” Lynx says, slamming his hand down onto the table next to Yuuri. He jumps at the noise, and the drink in Lynx’s other hand starts to slosh, splashing the table. “His name isn’t important, though. You have to vote for him to join!”

Yuuri narrows his eyes at the kid, focus shifted. “Wait, what do you have in that glass? Aren’t you fifteen?”

Lynx huffs, pushing his hair back with one hand, then shoves the drink into Yuuri’s shoulder instead. “Fine, you have it then. Will you vote for him or not?”

Yuuri grabs the drink and dips his head to take a sip from the straw, then nearly chokes. It must be pure vodka, possibly rubbing alcohol. What the hell? “Sure,” he coughs, eyes watering behind his mask. “That’s fine.”

Lynx just nods at him and stalks off, but Otabek pauses and pats him gingerly on the back while he coughs. “Thanks,” Yuuri says. “Have you and Lynx been… friends for very long?”

Otabek looks down at the floor, his face gravely serious. “We trained together when he was still on the Little Friends.” 

Yuuri looks the boy over closely. He doesn’t know him, and admittedly doesn’t even know Lynx that well aside from his skill in battles, but Man-Wolf or whatever he calls himself seems calm and stable. That’s exactly what Lynx needs more of on this team. God knows Twister and JJ won’t be winning any awards for psychological consistency. He’s not sure anyone on this team qualifies as a good role model for a kid, Aura aside. 

“Welcome to the team,” he says, even though he’s in no position to promise that, and Otabek looks up and quietly beams in return. Yuuri starts to rummage through his head for proper adult advice he can give, but then Lynx calls his friend from across the room and, with a nod to Yuuri, Otabek jogs off to continue campaigning for votes.

Yuuri is watching them attempt to work the room, drink rested on his knee, when something warm and wet slides across the back of his hand. He jumps out of his chair, sending it screeching across the wood floor as he clutches his hand to his chest. He half expects to find Chris or JJ pulling some weird trick on him, but the offender turns out to be a fluffy brown dog, still sniffing around the base of his chair. “Hello there,” he says, moving his drink to the table and then extending his hand again for the puppy to smell properly. “You scared me a little there. How’d you get in here?”

“So, the mysterious Night Owl is vulnerable to angry kittens and cute puppies? Those are dangerous weaknesses for a superhero.” Yuuri freezes. He doesn’t need to turn around to know who just said that. He knows the voice instantly from a thousand video interviews. His heart is suddenly racing as his mind scrambles to decode what’s being said and that it’s being addressed _to him_. While he’s distracted, Aura steps around to stand directly in front of him. “You not only came to my party, but you’re staying for the vote? Is this a new, improved Night Owl?”

Yuuri doesn’t know what to say. He takes a big sip of his drink, then remembers when the taste hits his tongue that it’s still the foul thing he confiscated from Lynx. He has to bite his lip to make himself swallow the pure alcohol without coughing in front of his hero, and his eyes water at the corners, vision blurring. He gets the last of the liquid down without choking, burning through his system and warming his blood. He can feel his cheeks starting to flush already. “Yeah,” he says dumbly. “Well, Lynx made a very passionate argument.”

Aura laughs and holds his hand out. Yuuri stares at the outstretched hand, uncomprehending. Slowly, he presses his drink into Aura’s palm, but the other man just laughs again and pulls away. “No, no, keep that,” he says. “I’m trying to formally introduce myself. I don’t think we’ve really gotten to talk. I’m Victor.”

Given that Yuuri just tried to hand the man his drink, he expects the next words out of his own his own treacherous mouth will be something like ‘I know that’ or ‘of course’ or, worst possibility of all ‘Victor Mikhail Nikiforov’. To his relief, he winds up on the much less embarrassing. “Ah, yes, that is, well-”

Then the most powerful superhero in the world suddenly kneels at Yuuri’s feet. He’s not sure if it’s the image making his head spin or the alcohol, but he grabs the edge of the table just in case. Victor just starts petting the dog, which Yuuri had completely forgotten was even there. “And this is Makkachin! She’s the best girl ever, except when she’s naughty and breaks out of her den to visit, like right now.” He hugs the dog around the neck, and that’s some image in itself. Yuuri has seen Aura pick up full-sized cars and snap guns in half with his hands, and here he is on the floor, gently holding a big fluffy dog while she slobbers on his perfectly symmetrical face.

He stands up and smiles at Yuuri, tilting his head like a puppy himself, but Yuuri can’t imagine what he’s waiting for. “Oh,” Victor exclaims suddenly, putting his hand up to his mouth. “I’m sorry, of course you have a secret identity. Don’t feel pressured to tell me your real name.” Ah, that’s what he wanted from Yuuri, of course, and he’s just standing here like a dork.

“Night Owl is just fine,” Victor says, his tone subdued, as if they’re sharing a secret. “Personally, I don’t blame you for wanting privacy.” 

It clicks together with Yuuri’s train of thought from earlier in the night, and he hears himself saying in return, “I think it’s so sad, how you never got to make that choice.”

His own voice is muffled, and the whole moment feels like he’s watching from the other end of a long hallway. Victor’s expression freezes, then goes totally cold, the light in his eyes shuttered away. Yuuri stutters to try and correct himself, or to apologize, but before he can say anything coherent Victor’s face just drops. “You’re right,” he says, stroking the dog’s head. “It is sad. If you’ll excuse me, I need to get Makkachin back to her room. It was nice meeting you.”

Then, Yuuri’s childhood hero turns and walks away, holding his dog by the collar. Yuuri grabs a straw he discarded on the table earlier, sticks it into his glass, and tries to drink quickly enough that he won’t taste the liquid inside.

The rest of the evening is a blur. Yuuri remembers music, and laughter, and talking with a few new people, although not what they were talking about. In a moment of some clarity, he stands up to go find the bathroom, only to feel the alcohol rush to his head and realize he’s not so steady on his feet. He stumbles, but manages to find his way back to the front entryway while only bumping a few people. One of those is Twister, who seizes him by the waist with a laugh and begins to spin them. That does nothing for Yuuri’s balance, and he feels himself slipping out of his grasp. 

Before he can hit the floor, someone catches him under his arms and hauls him back to his feet. “Are you okay?” He finds himself up close and personal with the familiar blue eyes and shining silver locks of his idol and sighs happily.

“Hey!” Another voice, angry, from a much smaller person. “You’re not leaving before we vote, are you? You promised! I traded you my drink!”

“ _Your_ drink? Yuri, what the hell did you give him? He’s a mess!”

There’s a mumbled response that Yuuri can’t quite parse, maybe in another language. He slings his arm around Victor’s waist to hold himself up, and rests his head on the taller man’s shoulder. He closes his eyes for just a moment, and then someone is shaking him. It’s Victor still. Yuuri smiles. “Victor! You’re comfortable.”

“Thank you,” the other man says solemnly. “Night Owl- damn, I wish I knew your name right now. I need to know how long it normally takes you to metabolize alcohol.”

Yuuri shakes his head and nearly loses his balance again, but Victor is still holding him, which is great. He’s so strong. “Regular time, I guess,” Yuuri says helpfully.

Victor is frowning now, and that’s not good. Yuuri extends one finger, and places it directly in the center of the frown line on Victor’s forehead. “You don’t have an advanced metabolism?”

Ah, of course. Most of the people at the party have super speed or super healing or something else super duper. They all process things like calories and alcohol faster than normal humans. Yuuri doesn’t have any of that, so he says, “Nope!” Then he loses track of the conversation again.

At some point, Yuuri must have given Victor his phone, or else Victor dug it out of his back pocket, because Victor calls Phichit. He puts Yuuri on the phone, but Yuuri mostly says things like, “Phichit! Phichit I’m at the party with Victor!” He says this more than once, apparently, because Phichit keeps telling him to stop. Finally, Victor takes the phone back. There’s a lot of talking he can’t hear because he’s only here with Victor and Phichit isn’t here, but in the end Victor hangs up the phone, puts it back into his pocket, and starts to lead him out of the room.

“You touched my butt,” he tells Victor. Then, “where are we going?” He cranes his head back over his shoulder at the party. People are definitely looking at him, possibly everyone, and something unpleasant starts to creep up his spine. Then he remembers that he’s with Victor, so they’re probably staring at Victor, and the bad feeling melts away.

“I’m taking you home,” Victor says, pulling Yuuri toward the front door by his waist. Something bothers him about that, but he can’t remember what it is, especially not once Victor suddenly bends and picks him up, cradling him against his chest like a bride. “Don’t throw up on me,” he says, and before Yuuri can ask why he’d do that he realizes they’re stepping outside, and then they’re in the air.

As soon as Yuuri looks down, he feels nauseous. He quickly closes his eyes, which makes it worse, because he can feel the movement of the air around him, but can’t see anything. “I feel sick,” he admits.

“Just look at me instead of the ground.” 

Since he’s been given permission, Yuuri stares up at Victor’s face. His silvery hair reflects the starlight, haloed by the deep blue of the night sky as the cold air whips around them. “So beautiful,” he whispers. He could be talking about the stars. He wraps his arms tightly around Victor’s neck.

Too quickly, the start to descend. Yuuri looks down to find them hovering over the squat brown brick building he knows all too well. He can see the dead community garden on the roof, and the bright ember of Takeshi’s secret cigarette outside the Nishigoris’ window. “Which balcony is yours?” Yuuri points to his usual fire escape entry window, and Victor guides them down to it, depositing Yuuri on the rusty metal platform, which groans slightly under their combined weight.

“Thank you,” he tells Victor, who is busy looking around at the outside of the building and down into the alley below. He starts to pull at the window, but can’t quite get it to come up. It tends to stick. “For the ride, I guess. I’ve got it from here.”

“Let me help,” Victor interjects. He pulls at the window with one hand, and it pops right open. Something audibly snaps. The joys of super strength. Then Yuuri realizes that Victor is now peering inside his apartment and he almost stumbles off the fire escape in his rush to block the view. Instead, Victor catches him by the shoulders again, and Yuuri finds himself staring directly into his idol’s concerned eyes. “Are you sure you’ll be alright? I could stay.”

“Yes,” Yuuri swats at his hands lightly, a fly pushing on a lion. “I’m fine, mother.” Victor just huffs a laugh and, to Yuuri’s shock, plants a kiss on the top of his head. He looks up to find the other man looking flushed, but it could just be the wind bringing color to his cheeks. “Good night,” Yuuri says quietly.

“Good night,” Victor repeats, and then he takes to the air again, leaving nothing but an imprint on Yuuri’s eyelids and a quickly vanishing streak among the other stars.

Yuuri crawls in through the window, pulls off his boots and jacket, and drops on the bed with his mask still on.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought this would be a separate story but it worked better as a second chapter, so I lied - sorry.
> 
> Content warning! I added some new tags. There are fights with bad guys in this chapter. People bleed, but it's not any more graphic than Yuuri's injuries in chapter 1. Yuuri also has a panic attack and deliberately (mildly) hurts himself to get through it. I don't think any of the violence is serious enough to warrant an upgrade in the rating or a "graphic violence" warning, but if you disagree please let me know.

Yuuri wakes up feeling like his head was run over by a small car, possibly more than once. His eyes are crusty, and the skin of his face feels stiff and stretched tight over his bones. He reaches up to rub the sleep from his eyes and feels fabric against his fingertips. Once he’s worried out loud that he was becoming jaded about the life of a vigilante superhero, but passing out without removing his domino is a new achievement. Clearly he has not yet plumbed the depths to which he could fall in the world.

He hisses as the light from the window filters through his lashes and tries to bury his face in the pillow, but the movement pulls twinges of pain from both his face and his injured bicep. Groaning, he rolls to the edge of the bed and sets his feet on the floor. At least he remembered to take off his boots before passing out this time. 

His phone says its only 8:30, although he forgot to set his alarm, not that it matters since he doesn’t work today. He opens a new text message window.

 **Yuuri:** help me yuuko i’m dying

He levers himself off the bed with his good arm, then hobbles into the bathroom and checks the mirror. The mysterious masked man squinting back at him definitely looks worse for wear - his black hair is sticking up everywhere from the gel he left in it overnight, and the skin around the edges of his mask has the distinct pinkish look of irritation. He left his contacts in overnight again, too. He’s a human disaster.

He closes the bathroom door, moves his now-dry costume clothes onto the back of the toilet, and starts the bath filling with hot water, knowing a soak and the steam will help. His phone, still on silent, is now flashing at him insistently.

 **Yuuko:** Yuuri I’m at work what do you mean?

 **Yuuko:** Do I need to call Phichit?

 **Yuuko:** Are you joking? Or do I need to call Takeshi?

 **Yuuko:** I’m going to call Takeshi.

He grabs the phone, hurriedly thumbing open the message thread. Joking about dying with a nurse was not his smartest move ever, although given his last twenty-four hours, he knows he could do worse.

 **Yuuri:** no no no

 **Yuuri:** don’t call anyone I’m fine

 **Yuuri:** i’m just hungover

 **Yuuri:** sorry.

He stares at the screen, waiting eagerly for the read receipt. 

He jumps when someone starts banging on the front door. Oh crap, she did call Takeshi. Yuuri meets his own wide eyes behind the mask in the mirror. He can’t go to the door in the mask, but the steam hasn’t loosened the adhesive on his face nearly enough. He doesn’t have time to wait for the solvent, either. This is going to hurt.

He braces himself against the edge of sink, grabs one corner of the mask, and rips it off like a bandaid. Then he stuffs his fist in his mouth to muffle the noise he instinctively makes at the pain, eyes tearing. The knocking starts again, louder, and he pulls his fist from his mouth. “Hang on!” 

He checks the mirror again, but luckily the pain left his face so bright red all over, not only where the mask had pulled off a layer of skin. It’s good enough. He runs to the door.

As soon as he gets the door open, Takeshi shoves a small bottle of ginger ale, a tube of crackers, and two packages of chicken ramen into Yuuri’s chest. He scowls, pointing one finger at Yuuri aggressively. “Don’t you ever freak Yuuko out like that again, hear? _Especially_ not when she’s at work.” Yuuri can only nod dumbly, but his neighbor immediately sighs and drops the tension from his shoulders. “And don’t drink so much next time unless I’m there to protect you. I know how you get.”

Before Yuuri can even open his mouth to ask how he gets, Takeshi’s spun off back to his own apartment. 

A little dazed, he shuts the door quietly behind himself, dumps the ramen packages on the counter, and takes the crackers and ginger ale with him back to the bathroom, where the tub is now nice and full. The blinking light on the phone indicates he finally has a text response waiting for him.

 **Yuuko:** Take care of yourself.

Yuuri can’t help but smile a little, reading that. Yuuko’s a good friend to put up with someone like him. He takes out his contacts finally, which instantly makes his face feel much better. Then he carefully places his phone on the soap cubby in the shower and strips down to check the cut on his arm. It’s looking good, but it’s not quite ready for the water yet, so he wraps it in plastic once more, then slowly sinks into the hot water with a hiss.

The tub is small, forcing him to choose between having his chest well out of the water or sticking his knees up into the cold air. It's far from the onsen baths he enjoyed back home, and he’s hit hard by a pang of sadness as soon as he settles into the tub, thinking again of everything and everyone he left behind. He feels his skin tighten in reaction to the heat, but his muscles begin to relax.

He shifts his knees up to allow his back and neck to sink down beneath the water and stares up at the greyish, water-stained popcorn ceiling. With his ears submerged, he can close his eyes and drift to the echo of the dripping faucet, immediately taking himself back to the staccato memories from last night. He groans and the sound bounces back at him, reflected by the bathroom tile.

The first time he met his idol, and he really was an unqualified fuck-up. He’d practically said, ‘Nice to meet you, sorry about your dead parents,’ hadn’t he? And he’d tried to hand the man his drink instead of shaking his hand! He sinks himself further into the tub, the water lapping at the corners of his eyes now. 

And of course, then he’d just gotten _wasted_ , falling down, embarrassing himself so utterly that his host had to leave _his own party_ in order to get Yuuri out of there. The other guests had probably been concerned he was going to vomit on the fake plants or something. He digs the heels of both hands into his eyes.

Why had he even agreed to go to the stupid party? He wasn’t a real member of the Justice Friends, as Aura and Lynx had both seen fit to point out. Lynx had even said it outright - as a member of the team, Yuuri is useless. Hell, Phichit gets invited on more missions he does, and Yuuri loves Phichit, but his superpower is that _his hands makes lights that look pretty_. But Phichit is a good friend. He’s dependable and knows how to be on a team. Yuuri is basically just a weird fan who won’t let go, and gets his ass beat by the bad guys every time he goes outside. 

He takes a deep breath and puts his feet up on wall beside the faucet, submerging his face completely. His eyes start stinging when he opens them under the water. There must be residual soap on the tub from the last time he showered. He releases his held breath, watching the burst of air escape to the surface as bubbles.

He waits. His chest starts to feel uncomfortable, lungs burning. If he didn’t have a pounding headache, he might feel light-headed. He waits.

When he can’t take it any longer, he pushes off the wall with his legs, launching his head out of the tub with a great, desperate gasp of breath. The water from the overfilled tub sloshes over the side at the sudden disruption, drenching his bathroom rug well beyond what it can absorb. He leans back against the cool porcelain, still breathing rapidly.

His phone vibrates loudly against the plastic shelf it’s on, and he grabs at it without drying his hands. It’s ringing, but he doesn’t recognize the number. He swipes his hand uselessly across his equally damp chest and, after a couple attempts, manages to thumb the call to voicemail. 

He puts the phone back on the shelf, only to hear it vibrate again immediately. He glances over, expecting one of those weird, cut off 10 second voicemails from a recording, but sees instead a text notification from the same number.

 **Unknown:** Feeling ok today?

He frowns at the phone, and thinks back to the previous day. He basically never talks to anyone but Yuuko, Takeshi, and Phichit. Phichit had gotten that licensing deal and that new car - maybe he decided to get a new phone as well?

 **Yuuri:** who is this?

 **Unknown:** It’s Victor! :-)

Yuuri drops the phone in the tub.

He immediately scrambles to get it out, but the rug is practically as wet as the tub now, so climbs out of the bath and rushes to wrap the phone in his towel. The screen is dark. It’s not looking good. Shit, he doesn’t have insurance on it, and he certainly can’t afford to buy a new phone right now. He puts it on the side of the sink, wraps the towel around himself, and then takes the phone into the kitchen to find some rice. 

Why would Victor be texting him? Why would he be _calling_ him? _Where did he even get Yuuri’s phone number?_ He mentally scrolls back through what he remembers of his interactions with Aura at the party: he got to pet a dog, and then he tried to hand Victor his drink, and then he mentioned his dead parents… Yuuri drags himself with force out of his own head and realizes he’s standing in his kitchen in nothing but a towel, staring at a bowl of rice. He’s not getting any new information this way.

He gets dressed and makes some of the crappy instant ramen that Takeshi brought over to get something salty and solid in his stomach, cracking his last egg into it as it boils for some actual nutrition. Payday is tomorrow, and then he can buy more eggs and rice for the week. 

Watching the pot bubble reminds him again of his mom and the wonderful, authentic meals he could be enjoying right now if he were back in Hasetsu helping his parents, rather than running around in a mask on the other side of the world. Some days it feels like everything is conspiring to make him homesick. 

With some food and water in his system, his head starts to clear a little, and he takes off for the gym. 

-

When he gets home, there’s a note on his door in Japanese, telling him to let Takeshi know when he gets back. He rips it off the door and heads inside to rinse the sweat off. His laundry bin is full again already, between clothes for work that reek of popcorn and mold, and clothes for the gym that reek of sweat. He can tell the water bill will be a rough one this month, but its not like he can shower at the gym, where any of the other members could walk by and notice the bruising, the scars, the gash in his arm. He’s not making that mistake again, even if it would save both time and money.

Once he’s washed and dressed again, he knocks on the Nishgoris’ door. His fist is still resting against the wood when the door opens under his hand and someone reaches out, grabbing him by his collar to drag him into the apartment. Takeshi jabs Yuuri in the chest hard with his index finger while closing the door, trapping him with his back pressed against it. “Where were you? Where is your phone? People have been texting you!”

Yuuri rubs his chest where Takeshi’s aggressive finger had been stabbing at an old bruise. “Sorry, sorry. I dropped my phone in the bath, and it’s still drying out in my kitchen.”

“Ah,” Takeshi relaxes, and Yuuri suddenly notices the other man is wearing a floral apron, one he’s seen on Yuuko many times. He stares, absolutely thrown, until Takeshi notices what he’s looking at and immediately flails to rip it off, blushing furiously. “I had to wash the dishes,” he hurriedly explains. “I already dressed for work!”

Yuuri shrugs and looks away. It’s not like he was going to laugh at him or something, he was just _surprised_ by it. Takeshi is a good dad, he knows that, but Yuuri rarely gets to see the gooey center of his tough exterior that Yuuko insists is there.

He stows the apron away, revealing the mechanic’s jumpsuit he was wearing underneath, then Takeshi turns his attention back to Yuuri. “I don’t know what you’ve done, but Yuuko has been texting me about you all day! She was very upset when you weren’t answering her, and apparently Phichit was texting her because _he_ couldn’t reach you either.”

Yuuri bites his lip. Of course, Phichit left the party early, but by now he’s probably heard all about what happened from the other members of his team. God, he is not looking forward to that conversation. Could he be kicked off the team for being such an embarrassment? Could _Phichit_ be kicked off because bringing Yuuri was such a mistake? 

No. He pushes back against that thought immediately. No matter what, he won’t let Phichit lose out on his dreams over Yuuri, even if it means Yuuri needs to sacrifice his position with the team.

Yuuri’s startled from his thoughts by a warm mug being pressed into his hand. Coffee. He looks at Takeshi quizzically, but the older man just takes him by the shoulders, turns him around, and gently pushes him toward the living room. “Go spend some time with the girls while I finish in here, eh? Yuuko will be home soon.”

Yuuri nods and submits to direction. Axel, Lutz, and Loop are safely blocked into the living area with a significant number of baby gates covering every exit. Yuuri steps over the nearest gate and feels immediately that he’s entered a battle ground. There are no babies in sight, and that’s a problem, because the floor is littered with blankets, toys, and other soft, squishy things. Any one of these things could secretly be a baby.

He walks on tiptoe across the carpet toward the sofa, trying not to step on any lumps. He’s only a couple feet from sitting down when he loses his balance and, trying to salvage the coffee above all, lets his heel come down onto a small rubber giraffe, which retaliates the mistreatment by releasing a long, high-pitched squeak.

Yuuri freezes in place, eyes darting around the room. There’s no sign of moment, so he quickly covers the last couple steps to the sofa and sits down. From in front of the TV, a pile of blankets suddenly starts to twitch, then rises up and pulls back, revealing three small pairs of eyes. Yuuri takes a long sip of his coffee, and swallows. His fate is now inevitable. He surrenders. 

When Yuuko gets home from the hospital a short time later, she finds Night Owl, vigilante menace and protector of the streets, sat cross-legged on her sofa with one girl on each knee and the third curled right up against his chest. All four of them are sound asleep.

\- 

Yuuri wakes up to Yuuko lifting the last sleeping baby gently off his chest, winking at Yuuri as she carts her daughter away to the nursery. He stretches, yawning, as Yuuko quietly closes the door to the girls’ room, then comes over to join him on the sofa, ruffling his hair fondly. “Yuuri,” she sighs. “I was so worried about you. Are you okay?”

“Ah, yes,” he ducks under her touch, playing along with a ritual they’ve had since childhood. “Sorry about the text this morning. And the dead phone. And also Phichit.”

“Good, good,” she says, her eyes crinkling as she smiles. “I’m so relieved everything is okay.” Then the smile drops off her face, and she jabs her finger into his sternum. Yuuri briefly wonders, as she hits the same bruise, if she learned that from Takeshi or the other way around. “But if you ever, ever worry me like that again, I want you to know that I will _call your mother_ , Katsuki Yuuri.”

Yuuri gapes at her, stricken. “Yuuko, no.”

“Yuuko, yes. I’ll tell her _everything_ ,” she continues, practically hissing. “And Mari too. You could have been dead in an alley somewhere! I know I sound like a mom right now, but that’s actually a real concern with you.” She throws her arms out in frustration, then crumples in on herself, her face in her hands, and shakes her head. 

Slowly, Yuuri reaches out and lightly pats her messy bun. He feels a shudder, like a sob, but he’s not sure if she’s crying or not. She looks up, scrubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands until they’re red, or they already were. “You can’t just ignore things like this as if no one will care if something happens to you, Yuuri,” she pleads. “At least pretend you believe we love you, okay?” 

“Of course,” Yuuri says, rubbing her back gently. It’s good of her to keeping trying so hard with him, despite his failures. “Of course I believe you.”

-

After placating Yuuko with promises to knock on her door and check in physically until his phone is fixed, Yuuri finally makes some vague excuses and gets back to his own apartment to start prepping for patrol. He grabs a protein shake from the fridge for dinner and takes it to the couch, licking his lips to try to clear out the chalky texture.

He grabs his pants and coat from the bathroom, inspecting them quickly for issues. Both still have rips in the knees, and the arm. He’ll have to repair that before he can take them out onto the street. They should have been done this morning, but then the day hasn’t exactly gone according to plan. He shuffles through the various odds and ends on the table by the couch until he finds his sewing kit, turns the pants inside out, and gets to work repairing the tears while he finishes drinking his shake.

In the end, he can hold up two pieces of clothing with no more giant rips in them. The fixes aren’t pretty, but they’ll hold, and hopefully it will be a long time before he has to buy any new pants or coats.

He strips off his daytime clothes, laying them out on the bed, and steps into the cargo pants. Of course, no amount of sewing Yuuri could do would fix the t-shirt he had to cut off himself the other night. He heads to check the closet, thinking he might have a sleeveless black top that will do until he can get another pack of shirts from the store. 

He’s still sorting through the closet, looking for a tank top, when he hears a tapping noise at the window behind him. This is exactly the sort of thing his father always warned him about as a child - you feed a pigeon or a stray animal once or twice, and they come around forever. Yuuri never really saw a problem with that, though.

He looks back over his shoulder to see which creature is begging scraps off him this time and sees - silver hair, blue eyes, magenta and gold. He feels like an American cartoon character, his jaw unhinged and pooling on the floor. Then he remembers he’s not dressed and wraps his arms around his torso quickly, trying to cover. But, he’s not wearing a mask either! Oh, god. He quickly puts a hand over his eyes. Now he can’t see. That helps.

He shuffles slowly around the bed to the window, peeking between his fingers. Proudly, he only bumps his shins on the side of the bed once before making it over to the wall. He pulls his other arm away from his chest just long enough to lift open the window. It suddenly slides open much more easily than it had before.

“Hello!” Aura immediately sticks his head through the opening, followed quickly by the rest of him. “Thank you for letting me in. Oh! I can look away until you get a mask on.” He straightens up, absolutely filling the room with the brightness of his very existence, but then stares deliberately down at the floor.

Yuuri watches him cautiously for a moment to see if he peeks, then backs away to dig a domino out of the closet and stick it on with spray adhesive. Safe, for some values of the word. Safe, but still shirtless. He frowns into the closet, and finally manages to spot a scrap of black fabric draped over the side of his hamper. Well, a dirty shirt is better than no shirt at all. He grabs it and pulls it on, then turns back to Aura. “Okay, you can look now.” 

Victor raises his head and immediately starts looking around the apartment. He looks like one of the bad Photoshop manipulations Phichit used to make, standing in the middle of Yuuri’s disastrous studio apartment in his immaculate uniform and shining like a god. It’s like someone cut and pasted an image from one of Yuuri’s posters into a photo of his bedroom. The lighting looks off in _reality_. 

Yuuri feels a sudden stab of panic, remembering he has _posters of this person_ on his closet door. He subtly scoots backwards and nudges the sliding door he decorated behind the other, mirrored door as quietly as he can, hiding his shame.

“This is your apartment?” Victor sounds surprised, and Yuuri wets his lips to respond, but before he can try to explain away the size or the mess, the other man finishes with, “I love it!”

Well, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Victor’s house is enormous. He has rooms in his place twice the size of Yuuri’s entire studio, but here he is, walking around like he’s a tourist in an art museum, examining all of Yuuri’s sad, discarded things. All he can do is watch, uncomprehending, as Aura wanders through his space, picking up objects to look at them more closely. He only snaps out of it when he sees the silver head bent low to get a closer look at some of the photos on the fridge - photos of Yuuri’s family, and pictures of Hasetsu.

“Ah,” Aura jumps like he forgot Yuuri was still in the room until he heard his voice. “I’m sorry. You caught me off guard here. Can I… help you with something?”

“Oh, right, yes.” The bright, curious look he’s worn since he crawled through the window melts off Victor’s face, leaving his expression startlingly blank. “I’m very mad at you.”

Yuuri can feel his skin tighten against the domino as his eyes widen. His stomach drops. “M-mad at me?”

“Yes, I’ve been texting you all day. I thought maybe something was seriously wrong with you.” Victor frowns, shaking his head. “But now I see you’re just inconsiderate.”

“No, no!” Yuuri waves his hands, then scurries over to the bowl on the kitchen counter, fishing his phone out of the rice to show Victor. “I dropped my phone in the tub when I took a bath this morning, so it hasn’t been working.”

Victor looks at the phone, then the bowl of rice, then back at the phone. He puts one finger to his lips. “I don’t understand. Why is there rice? Why didn’t you just buy a new phone if that one is broken?”

Yuuri blinks, dumbstruck. How exactly is he going to explain to Victor Nikiforov that a new cell phone would cost him nearly two months’ rent? Or that most people in general don’t just walk out and replace something like a phone immediately? It’s all a bit outside Yuuri’s area of expertise. 

“Ah,” Victor says suddenly, smiling brightly once more. “This seems like a money thing. It’s okay; I’ll buy you a new phone.”

“No!” The other man looks struck back by Yuuri’s vehemence. He slips his phone back into the bowl. “I appreciate the offer, but it’s not necessary. The rice absorbs the water,” he explains. “It will be good as new tomorrow.” Hopefully.

“So you weren’t ignoring me?”

The memory of that rejected call tugs at Yuuri’s gut. “No, no. I’d have texted you back tomorrow!” Maybe. Probably not. “You really didn’t have to come all the way over here just to check on me.”

Victor tilts his head like a dog trying to make sense of human language. “Why not?” Before Yuuri can answer, he sweeps right along, “Well, maybe I am being a little ridiculous. Certain people would say I do that sometimes.” 

He stops, eying Yuuri up and down thoroughly enough that he considers covering himself with his arms, ridiculous fears of x-ray vision in the back of his head. “Oh, but you’re dressed for a fight. Are you going on a mission?” Again, he pauses as if waiting for a response, but then runs right over the answer, “I should come with you.”

Yuuri flushes to the tips of his ears. “Oh, that’s - that’s _really_ not necessary! I’m just going to walk around the neighborhood, rescue lost cats from trees, that sort of thing.” The only thing that could possibly make this situation worse would be getting his ass kicked _in front of_ his idol.

To Yuuri’s shock, Victor begins to pout dramatically- lower lip protruding and trembling slightly beneath wide eyes. He has one of those faces that makes it very obvious that the puppy dog eyes are an unnatural and deliberate ploy. “But I came all this way. Surely you don’t want me coming out to this part of town just to waste my time?”

Yuuri is torn between his terror of being seen as he truly is by his hero and the years of training in hospitality and etiquette screaming from the back of his mind. The etiquette wins out. “Okay,” he sighs. “I guess an extra set of hands certainly won’t make anything worse.”

Victor claps, breaking out an authentic, dazzlingly wide grin. “Perfect! Tonight we’re a team of two.”

-

Yuuri generally considers himself to be someone who works alone. He’s made the occasional exception for Phichit, sure, and he’s popped up at Justice Friends missions once or twice, but Night Owl is a solo act.

So when he starts to realize he and Aura are working _well_ together, the feeling fizzles through his limbs like a mild electric current. He goes out on his usual route, walking the alleys and mounting the fire escapes of the inner city maze he’s learned by osmosis in the past few years. Here, where he got a concussion after the victim threw a rock at him instead of the bad guy. There, where a group of homeless men sleep most nights when the weather’s good and will tip him off to bad actors in exchange for even just a little respect. Aura follows his lead, and Yuuri might not even notice he was there most of the time, if it weren’t for the part where he’s _flying_ and also _glowing_ constantly. Those parts are a little distracting.

On one street, they grab a guy in the middle of running off with a designer purse, and while Night Owl is tying the mugger up, Aura gets the bag safely returned to its owner. The grateful young woman, practically draping herself into Aura’s arms, begs for a kiss or at least a selfie with her hero and looks, frankly, a little put out when Victor makes her include Yuuri in the picture too. 

Then, they help a store owner chase down a couple kids who grabbed beer from the store and took off. Aura obviously moves a lot faster than Yuuri could have, or any human for that matter, yet by the time Yuuri comes around the corner, the kids have mysteriously disappeared, leaving the six-pack safe at Victor’s feet. “I don’t know where they went,” Aura says, eyes too wide to be authentic. “It’s like they vanished into thin air.” They both pretend not to hear the distinct creaking of rusted metal on a nearby fire escape.

An elderly woman flags them down as they pass by her apartment and asks them for help getting some boxes out of her storage closet, of all things. It has to be Aura’s ethereal presence prompting that request, because contrary what he claimed earlier, Night Owl never actually gets asked to do things like rescue kitty cats from trees. After they move about a dozen hefty boxes of photos from the woman’s closet, she gives them each a fresh chocolate chip cookie and pecks them on the cheek.

All things considered, Yuuri is beginning to wonder if he didn’t hit his head earlier in the night, and everything since has been a weird concussion-inspired hallucination. He stares at Aura, who is hovering next to him, just a few inches above the ground, faintly glowing and probably getting melted chocolate chips all over his immaculate uniform. It briefly occurs to Yuuri to ask if he does his own laundry.

“I like this,” Victor says suddenly, between bites of cookie. “Your people here are very nice. No one ever thanks you for stopping aliens from blowing up earth.”

“They literally built a statue of you,” Yuuri points out, dumbfounded. “They gave you a key to the city. You met the President.”

“Yes,” Victor responds solemnly. “They didn’t make me cookies, though.” He looks legitimately disappointed by this. Yuuri was considering pointing out that his patrol is never like this - that the night has been quiet and easy, the people friendlier, and the problems less complicated than what he normally walks into. But there’s something about the way Aura looks, frankly magical as he floats through the night next to Yuuri, but simultaneously just disappointed to have run out of cookies. Yuuri can’t bear to snap the illusion for him.

The next couple blocks are quiet, so they cut through an alley between two warehouses, starting to circle back toward Yuuri’s apartment building. It’s like Aura’s very presence has been a talisman to bring luck to the patrol, and Yuuri’s starting to seriously contemplate the possibility of an early night home and a few more hours of sleep. 

There are sounds up ahead of them in the alley. Yuuri can just make out indistinct male voices, the sound of a car engine, and music. Nothing about it is particularly suspicious if not for the hour and the location. Yuuri puts his arm out, stopping Victor short. “It’s probably nothing, but we need to check this out carefully,” he murmurs, glancing back over his shoulder. “Can you put out that light around yourself?”

Aura nods, dropping to set his feet on the ground like anyone else. As soon as he touches pavement, the glow disappears. His costume still isn’t subtle, but at least he’s not actively impersonating a night light anymore. Yuuri nods at him to follow as he slowly approaches the source of the noise.

There’s a big white cargo truck backed into an alley to their left, almost completely blocking the path. The engine is running, driver’s door propped open, and the radio is cranked. The squeal of electric guitars reverberates off the bricks around them. Yuuri crouches, moving along the hood of the truck to hide behind the door, then peers up through the window at the back of the truck. 

There are three guys in the rear, loading something from the warehouse dock to the truck. Two of the men have a look that screams “hired muscle” or at least “club bouncer”, while the third guy is more slight, well-dressed, and standing up on the dock supervising while they handle the wooden crates.

From back here, Yuuri can’t tell what’s in the boxes. This could be a completely honest business venture, for all that it’s a bit late to be loading up shipments of stuffed animals and fresh flowers, but to know for certain he’ll have to get a better angle. He backs up to the nose of the truck, nods toward Victor to follow again, and then carefully climbs onto the hood, and from there up to the cab of the truck. 

The riskiest part of this venture is moving from the top of the cab onto the cargo area. If the truck is mostly empty, it will echo any noise he makes by shifting his weight and alert the men below that something fishy is going on. He crawls onto the back of the truck and pauses for reactions, but if he made any noise it's overwhelmed by the classic rock riffs still emanating from the truck’s speakers. He lies down flat and creeps forward slowly, using his arms to drag himself along the roof of the truck. He glances back and finds Aura following suit.

After what feels like an eternity of drag and pause, drag and pause, Yuuri finally pulls himself just short of the end of the truck, where he can see the workers and their cargo from above. Aura arrives beside him a moment later.

As he watches for any sign of trouble from below, Yuuri finds himself distracted by the warmth of the man next to him. They’re lying on the roof of the truck mere inches apart from shoulders to feet. He adjusts his legs slightly to lower his profile, and their calves brush. Yuuri takes shallow breaths, imagining he can feel Victor doing the same beside him, synchronized.

The supervisor steps into the warehouse for a moment, and one of the goons below them calls the other guy over and starts to pry open one of the wooden crates with a crowbar. They’re speaking a language Yuuri doesn’t recognize. It bears some resemblance to Russian, but the faint creasing of Aura’s brow indicates confusion, not understanding. 

The lid pops off the crate with a groan. It's full of straw, paper, packing peanuts, and also guns. Big guns. Yuuri looks over at Aura and finds him staring right back, looking more serious than Yuuri has seen him all night. This is definitely not a legal business venture.

One of the goons pulls a handgun from the crate and starts playing with it, waving it around like a total idiot who clearly never had a single lesson on gun safety. The supervisor comes back out of the warehouse with another dolly stacked high with crates and yells at him in the mystery language. There’s a lot of pointing and screaming, and more wild gesticulations with the hopefully unloaded gun, and then that crate gets sealed once again and loaded onto the truck with the rest.

Victor raises an eyebrow at Yuuri, questioning, but he just lifts his hand, signaling ‘wait’. They lie together, watching as the last few boxes are loaded into the back of the truck. Yuuri can feel Aura shifting against his side, having moved closer in the long stretch of minutes. He hides a smile in his own shoulder at the other man’s obvious impatience. Yuuri’s learned the importance of timing his moves to just the right moment to gain the advantage, while Aura clearly hasn’t needed to exploit that edge as often.

Finally, the last box lands in the cargo truck with a thud that vibrates the metal beneath them, and one of the goons drags the door down and secures it with a padlock. That’s when Yuuri gives Victor the go-ahead. With the same movement, he pulls his legs up under himself and flips off the top of the truck, landing mere inches from one of the gun smugglers. A brush of displaced air and a flash of light tells him that Victor’s joined him, and he glances over to see Aura facing down both the other goon and the supervisor. Two against one is more unfair for the two in this case.

Yuuri turns his attention back to his assigned baddie just as the guy throws a first punch, and he narrowly manages to duck, then kicks him in the knee. The goon immediately hunches over in pain, because Yuuri is very aware of his own strengths and weaknesses, and one thing he certainly packs is a damn solid kick. He tries to follow that up with a punch to the face and end the fight quickly, but his swing gets blocked. He feels his own head snap back as pain bursts through his left eye. Crap, that’s going to leave a mark, and black eyes are hard to excuse without looking suspicious. He staggers back for a moment, but uses his momentum to swing around, kicking his opponent’s other knee as hard as he can, then jumps out of the way as he crumples to the ground.

Yuuri sweeps the guy’s arms out from under him, wincing as his face hits the ground - possible broken nose, maybe even some teeth - then kneels on his back, pulling a length of rope from one of his pockets and quickly trussing his hands together behind his back.

He stands, wiping his hands on his pants, and turns to check on Aura. The other thug is on the ground already, out cold, leaving Victor facing off with the supervisor. As Yuuri watches, the glow which surrounds him dims and flickers, his feet touching the ground, and the enemy uses the opening to lash out, the single street light above the warehouse door glinting off the blade of a knife.

In a film this would all be happening in slow motion. The unexpected blade flashes in the light as Aura throws up an arm to protect his face, stumbling backwards, and then the sleeve of his uniform parts under the knife: first just a flutter of severed fabric, then the bloom of bright red, darkening already as it soaks through the cloth.

Yuuri feels himself go cold all over, and then his face flushes. He’s never seen his hero bleed before. Aura, too, is pulling back, staring down at his own arm like a foreign object. 

Their opponent apparently doesn’t understand the significance of the moment. He darts forward in the same instant that Victor staggers back, still grabbing his own arm. Yuuri sees the enemy’s arm rising, and he knows what comes next. The knife is still in his hand, and in a moment it finds a new sheath in the space above Aura’s collarbone. 

For once in his life, Yuuri doesn’t hesitate or question his own intuition - he runs. They’re only a few feet apart, but Yuuri crosses what feel like a gulf in an instant.

The bad guy’s eyes go wide and terrified as he finds Night Owl suddenly standing before him. He doesn’t have time to slow the downward momentum of his strike before Yuuri’s forearm meets his, blocking and then twisting, seizing his arm tightly and knocking the blade from his grip. Yuuri feels something give sharply in his own upper arm, but ignores it, driving the heel of his other hand into the man’s nose with as much force as he can manage.

The guy goes down hard, his head hitting the pavement with a dull thud. 

It’s alarming enough to shake him out of the headspace he’s in, and he drops to his knees to check on the bad guy first, feeling at his neck for a pulse.

“Is he going to be alright?” Victor asks, his voice strained. Yuuri nods, the other man’s heart beat firm beneath his fingers. He’ll likely live to stab another day.

Then he looks back over his shoulder, and realizes Victor is clutching his own arm tightly to his chest, dark red blood soaking through the remnants of his sleeve, running down his elbow, and staining the pink and gold of his uniform brick red. Yuuri jumps up with a wordless sound and rushes to him, gently pulling his arm away from his chest for a closer look at the wound.

At first all he sees is blood covering the arm, and his stomach shoots into his throat. He swallows to calm the nausea, then turns the gash toward the street light, trying to see past the blood. As he peers closer, he watches the edges of the wound slowly reaching toward each other, the gash already knitting together at the outer corners to form new, pink skin. 

He stares, fascinated at the sight of an injury closing right before his eyes. “Of course. You’ve got accelerated healing. I knew that,” he says dumbly. “I’ve just never even seen you _bleed_ before.”

“Yes, I think that I forgot I could bleed myself for a moment there.” Aura laughs lightly, but he doesn’t sound anything like he did earlier in the night. Yuuri glances up to see the other man still frowning down at the slowly knitting tear in his arm. “It’s healing much slower than normal tonight. At first I thought maybe it wasn’t healing at all.”

“You’re not glowing anymore,” Yuuri points out, as if this might have somehow escaped Victor’s notice. 

“No,” Victor is still looking away from him. “I guess I’m out of juice. Oh, no, your hand!” He reaches out to where Yuuri is still holding his arm up to the light, touching the back of his hand gently. His fingers come away red, blood running down Yuuri’s hand from under his coat, mingling with the drying blood on Victor’s arm. 

He pulls away, remembering the sharp pull, the wetness he felt on his arm when he went to block the attacker’s knife. “Oh no,” he groans. “I’ve pulled my stitches. Yu- my nurse,” he ducks his head away from Victor’s curious gaze, flushing under the scrutiny. “She’ll be furious.”

“Stitches?” His long fingers are still resting lightly on Yuuri’s hand. He must have forgotten. Yuuri can feel the warmth of his blush creeping up the back of his neck to the tips of his ears. He has to let go and pull away.

“I guess you’ve never had stitches,” he says, looking anywhere but at Victor. There are still bad guys on the ground that need securing. He pulls more rope from his cargo pockets, tying the hands and feet of both of Victor’s opponents as he explains. “I got stabbed a few days ago. My nurse had to sew the wound closed to heal, but I pulled the stitches fighting, so now it’s started bleeding again.”

He pauses in the middle of tying up one of the gun runners. “Could you call the police and let them know where these guys are? We can’t exactly drop them off at the department right now.” Victor nods, pulling his phone from somewhere inside his uniform. His phone case matches his costume.

Within a few minutes, Yuuri can hear the faint sound of a siren approaching. The police must take Aura more seriously than they do Night Owl. “I don’t suppose you can fly us out of here before they get here?”

Aura shoots him a puzzled look, then bounces on his tiptoes a few times. Yuuri’s going to pretend that’s not how his hero prepares to take off. He doesn’t look to actually be leaving the ground at all, and after a couple particularly enthusiastic bounces he gives up, shaking his head. “I think I’m grounded for now.”

“Okay, we get back the old-fashioned way, then.” He waves at Victor to follow, then ducks into a adjoining alley, too narrow for cars to follow. 

They start back in silence, just two men covered in entirely too much blood, limping through the shadows and the back streets to avoid notice. In this moment together, Yuuri finds a feeling swelling in his chest that they might be something he’d call unity, as if he were actually part of a team. He shoves the feeling down where it belongs. There’s no point in getting attached after only one night together.

As they pass by a small cluster of sleeping bags and tents, men with no safety to get back to, Victor suddenly speaks up again. “I’m sorry I can’t fly you back this time.” The light of a small fire set up in the homeless camp bounces off the gold in his uniform and the silver of his hair. The cut on his arm has vanished entirely, with only the dried blood on his skin giving away where the injury had been, but he still holds his arm close, like something precious. 

“Is something wrong?” Yuuri asks, tentatively. “What did you mean when you said you were ‘out of juice’?”

Victor seems to abruptly notice he’s still holding his arm, and extends it, testing the movement. He brushes his hair back from his face as he thinks it over. “My powers, well, it's a bit like a battery, right? A solar battery. It’s not like I need to lay out in the sun nude to recharge or anything.” A shame, Yuuri thinks to himself, flushing at the image. “But I’m not normally out this late at night and using my powers this long. That’s why I can’t heal, or fly, or-” He gestures to himself in full.

“Glow?” Yuuri guesses, and Victor nods in confirmation. 

“Although that part is really just a side effect of the rest of it. Despite what Lynx might tell you, I don’t deliberately try to impersonate a Christmas tree all the time for the attention.” He turns, winking at Yuuri deliberately. “Only sometimes.”

“I thought you looked like a firefly,” Yuuri muses to the pavement, a soft smile tugging at the corners of his mouth, but his insides freeze when he looks up, noticing Victor looking at him with curiosity and expectation. Somehow, Yuuri keeps coming back to this moment. “When I first saw you,” Yuuri explains, choosing his words with care. “In the news footage.” Maybe one day he’ll manage to talk to Victor for more than a couple hours without mentioning the day his parents died, but so far he’s batting zero for zero.

“Ah,” Victor looks up at the sky, although no stars are visible down here through the city’s light pollution, and Yuuri feels the weight of guilt settle in his stomach. Then Victor says, “That’s a lovely way to see it. At the time I had no idea what was happening, you know? I didn’t even notice the light when I was inside of it.” 

“Now, I usually forget it’s there until someone reminds me. Humans really can adapt to almost anything.” They finally pass out of the last alley and onto a sidewalk, staying close to the wall in an attempt to avoid attracting too much attention. Even when Aura isn’t actively glowing, that’s hard to do. He’s just built to stand out. Yuuri imagines how odd they must look to the few people out this time of evening; one man tall, godlike, an explosion of rich colors, while Yuuri slinks alongside him like a rat that somehow befriended a champion show dog.

“You probably know this,” Victor continues, interrupting the spiral of his thoughts. “But there are a lot of theories about where abilities like mine come from - what causes this to happen to me, but not oh, that guy.” He points to a random man passing by them who, seeing two men in costumes and masks, covered in blood, immediately goes white as a sheet and freezes in place. They should probably have stuck to the rooftops and alleyways. “I find the explanations really fascinating. Some of the scientists say it must be genetic, but there’s been no evidence yet. Some theorists believe it’s the work of God, creating protectors for humanity.” He pauses, his gaze caught on the dimly illuminated stained glass of a nearby church, then murmurs, “and of course, there are others who would argue we’re not human at all.”

Yuuri’s encountered a few of the last sort through the years - people who believe even those who live as heroes must be created by evil magic, or the influences of sinister alien conspiracies. It seems impossible that anyone might meet a person like Phichit and see him as a creature of evil.

“Another theory is that it comes from trauma,” Victor continues, and Yuuri can’t resist watching the quiet look on his face as he speaks. He thinks of the old cliche about being willing to listen to someone read a phonebook. “In this version, they say we’re all walking around with this potential somewhere in ourselves, possible superhuman abilities just lying dormant in the corners of our minds. Then, something awful happens to that person, and it triggers something in the brain. Something just,” he snaps his fingers, the sound echoing off the buildings around them, “bursts open. And the power floods out.”

They turn the corner toward Yuuri’s street, and he can see the lights in Yuuko and Takeshi’s apartment like a lighthouse steering him home. “Is that what it felt like, a flood?” He still feels like this conversation is skating on thin ice, and he’s dangerously close to upsetting Victor when they’re just minutes from home, but he can’t resist the unfettered access he has to peek behind the curtain at this other life. He spent ages flipping through page after page of interviews, but he’s never seen Aura mention these things.

Victor is quiet for a long moment, and Yuuri starts to think that perhaps hei finally pressed the wrong button, but as they reach the base of the fire escape, he says, “A little bit, I suppose. There was a roar in my ears, and a light, and then,” he shrugs. “I honestly don’t remember much after that. I was too focused on doing what I felt I _must_ do. I saw the footage the next day, like anyone else. Well,” he laughs, but it sounds forced. “I guess not like anyone else.”

Yuuri braces himself to pry the window open, but finds it slides quite easily now. He ducks through first, turning on the lamp by his bed for light so Victor can follow without crashing into anything in the unfamiliar room. Without asking, he goes directly to the kitchen and pours two glasses of water, then wets some paper towels to clean up the blood. Victor wanders after him, and takes the proffered towel from his hand, cleaning the dried blood from his arm. “That day wasn’t really the first time I used my powers, though,” he says, out of nowhere.

Yuuri pauses, his glass halfway to his lips. “No?” He can admit to himself that he was an obsessive fan. He watched every interview and bought every magazine Aura ever appeared in. The poster collection currently hiding in his closet is only a fraction of the merchandise he left back at his parents’ home. His inner fanboy is convulsing with joy inside his heart at all this new data.

“It had been going on for months,” Victor shrugs. “Not like that day, but little bursts I barely even noticed. I kept shutting the doors too hard, and then I fell in the driveway and afterward my jeans were torn and stained, but I hadn’t even bruised. I only started to add it up later.” Yuuri nods, moving to the living area and absently picking up a few things he left on the sofa earlier, in case Victor wants to sit and talk longer. It’s getting late. “It was more like I was sitting on the shore with my toes in the water, and then that day, someone just pushed me in.”

“What about you?” The questioni stops Yuuri short, his hands full of old cups and sewing detritus he cleaned off the couch. “What was it like, when your powers first kicked in?” Victor elaborates, as if maybe Yuuri just didn’t _hear_ him at first.

“Excuse me,” Yuuri whispers through the rushing in his ears and the building heat behind his eyes. He can’t do this here, not now, not in front of Aura. “I have to just-,” he drops everything back on the couch, walks quickly to the bathroom, and shuts the door none too gently behind himself. The bolt on the door slides into place with a click that reverberates off the shower tiles. He can hear Aura asking him something through the door, but he can’t make out the words. He drops onto the bath mat. When your powers kicked in? When your _powers_ kicked in? 

He can feel his own heart pounding against his ribs, and his breath comes faster, harsh and audible in the tiny room. He tries to fight it, to slow it down, but the effort makes him gasp and cough, choking on air. The heat behind his eyes boils over, tears rolling down his face. It’s so horrifying, but something cracked in his chest just wants to laugh. This whole time? This whole time he was excusing the others for not liking him. Of course they didn’t want to drag the ordinary human into most of their fights. They just knew he couldn’t keep up. That was fine. That was understandable. He was a liability, just one more bystander in need of protection.

But this? Victor didn’t _know_? Did none of them know? If his life before was what he got with everyone thinking he _was_ one of them, what happens now? He can hear someone tapping on the door, and Victor’s voice, but he’s not ready to hear the words still. He folds his head into his knees and lets himself shake apart. 

Gradually, he focuses on his breathing, still loud and fast, hitching with sobs. He had a therapist once, back in Hasetsu, who taught him a few techniques to calm himself in emergencies. They usually don’t work. He tries counting anyway: five, four, and then there’s a tapping on the door again. He closes his eyes tightly, pressing his forehead to his knees. Five, four, three - it’s knocking now. He covers his ears with his hands and starts again - five, four, three, two, one. He takes a deep breath and holds it. Five, four, three - the knocking gets louder, and Victor’s voice has climbed into the range of distress. Yuuri doesn’t have time for this.

He knows it’s not the healthy solution, but he also knows it will work. He puts his hand over the wound on his arm and digs his fingers in.

The starburst of pain, pink and white behind his eyelids, makes him gasp. It also clears his head immediately, sharp and overwhelming against the other thoughts. His surroundings leap into focus. Good. Well, not good, but useful. He can hear what Victor is saying now. “Night Owl, please.” He mutters something after that, but Yuuri can’t quite make it out. Then, louder, “I just need to know if you’re okay. Phichit isn’t answering his phone and I don’t-. I don’t know what to do right now. Please don’t make me break your door. I’m not even sure if I can right now.”

Yuuri takes another deep breath and removes his fingers from his arm. “Just a minute,” he says, still choking on the aftereffects of his crying jag. He climbs up from the floor, using the cold porcelain sink as leverage to pull himself to his feet, and takes a moment to splash cold water on his face and blow his nose. It’s not going to do much to fix the redness around his eyes, or the blood he knows is probably soaking through the sleeve of his coat. Good thing he wears black.

He stops to take a few more breaths as he braces himself against the sink, until the pain in his arm becomes just a throbbing ache. Once he feels he can’t put it off any longer, he opens the bathroom door. Victor is practically flat against the door frame, eyes wide and hair in disarray. “I’m sorry,” he says before Yuuri can even start to speak. “I was _just_ talking about how trauma can spark things, but I wasn’t even thinking when I asked.” He reaches out, taking Yuuri’s free hand in both of his. “I didn’t mean to remind you of something upsetting.”

“No, you didn’t do anything.” Yuuri reluctantly pulls his hand away. He can barely look Victor in the eye. He certainly can’t say this while holding his hand, but he knows he has to be completely, brutallly honest. As with his mask, it’s better to tear off the band-aid.

“I don’t have any powers,” he says, forcing the words out into the open and cringing as Victor’s lips part in surprise. “I never have. I thought you all knew that.” He swallows down the frustration he feels both with himself and the situation, then blinks back the impending tears from the corners of his eyes. “I understand if this… changes things with… my status on the team.” He licks his lips, and looks up at Victor through his lashes, feeling something burning through his limbs like a current. “But if it means you don’t think I can keep up, well, what does it say about all of you that I’ve been able to keep up for this long to begin with?”

Victor covers his mouth with both hands while Yuuri watches him warily. He can feel the beginnings of a blush warming his cheeks at his own bold declaration, and an apology starts to form on the tip of his tongue. Before he can fumble to excuse himself, Victor drops his hands to grab Yuuri’s _again_ , pulling him closer. Yuuri finds himself suddenly so close to his idol that he can feel warm breath on his cheek, staring up into wild eyes and a blinding smile. “I know exactly what that says,” Victor says, rubbing his thumb across the back of his hand distractingly. “It says that you are even more incredible than I thought.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Make sure you check out the [amazing art of Aura and Night Owl](http://plasmoduck.tumblr.com/post/175398329377/after-reading-louciferishs-absolutely-fantastic) by Magu!

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


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